I had an Email the other day that made me more excited than a grow man should be, I was invited by S.I.B.A., (Society of Independent Brewers), to be a beer judge at their Scottish events ! The first one that I am going to judge at is the bottled beer competition on the 18th of November and it will be held at "The Beehive" in Edinburgh. I am really looking forward to this event and trying my taste buds out on some great new Scottish beers. i will of course take my camera and write a report on this for the next issue of "A View From The Bar".

It's been a while since my last issue but I haven't been idle, I've reviewed some more pubs - check out the review of "Joseph Pearce", a pub on Edinburgh's Lieth Walk, or "Bread + Butter Bar Diner" an urban chic pub close to Glasgow's princess Square shopping center and also check out the review of one of Glasgow's most iconic bars "The Horse shoe", pictured below.

I started this web site about a year and a half ago as a hobby and an expression of my love for all things Scottish, beer, whisky, great pubs, festivals, etc. It has grown a lot since then both in size and in popularity, I get on average 220 hits a day.

I have now written a book called "TheTartan Pint" which should be on sale on the site in about two weeks time, (as a download E book), it will also be available on Amazon for I pad and Kindle. It is a comprehensive guide to ALL the Beers and Breweries Scotland has to offer. It has tasting notes and pictures of the pump clips for all the Beers and a brief description and history of the breweries.

I have put a lot of time and effort into this and hope that you will download it and enjoy it. It'll be priced at £2.49

I look forward to the next issue of "A View From The Bar" as there will be more surprises in store, until then, Cheers !!!

The summer is coming to an end and my thoughts are now about going back to work, but what a summer !

Great weather, great holidays and some great pubs and festivals.

I started my holidays by going camping near Glencoe, at Duror. On the way there we went to "The Drovers", on Loch Lomond. This is a very unusual pub that looks like the building is about to fall down and is full of old furniture and stuffed animals but feels great. I love this pub and would recommend it as one to visit, you won't forget it !

When we got to Duror we had a great time outdoors, but I did manage to get to a few pubs. The first pub I'd like to mention is "The Clachaig Inn". This pub is a brilliant place to go to with family or friends, its in Glencoe surrounded by beautiful scenery and has 3 bars, food, live music and a very welcoming atmosphere. When touring the area we also went to Oban and had a meal in "Cuan Mor", this is also where the Oban Bay Brewery is located. I tried to have a look around the brewery but unfortunately there was no one there that day to show us round.

The second week of the holidays we travelled to Loch Lomond and met up with some family at Rowardennan. If you are there you should try the "Clansman Bar" at the Rowardennan hotel. It's got a beer garden with a stunning view over Loch Lomond. You can also go wake boarding here, just walk down to the water from the bar and speak to the people with the speed boats, unfortunately I can't remember the company name !!!

Later in the summer went to St Andrews and around Fife with my mate John. We tried a few great pubs, such as "The Dreel Tavern" in Anstruther, the "Ship Inn" in Elie and "The Central Bar" in St Andrews.

The Edinburgh Festival has now started and I spent a day there this week with my two brothers Steven and kenneth and my nephew Marc. We saw three shows, two good, one rubbish and went to a few good pubs such as "The Jolly Judge". I also came across the show below and thought a few of you out there might like it, it's called "The Dirty int, check out the video below:

I'm sorry it's on its side, that's the way I filmed it.

I finished my day at the festival with a few pints fro the Orkney brewery at "The Guildford Arms". I took a little film as there as there was a jazz band playing, check it out below:

If you get the chance then I would urge you to go to the Edinburgh festival as there is something there for everybody. I think that there are about 20,000 performances planned this year, some expensive, some free and all prices in between.

I went to the Scottish Real Ale Festival last Thursday with my good mate, Stuart. We both enjoyed the festival and drank some great beers. We also managed to talk to a few brewers from around Scotland. Check out the video below for a flavour of the event. Cheers !!!

What a weekend ! I arrived at Thistly Cross on a sunny Friday afternoon and soon got into the spirit of things with a glass of the 14% Bowmore whisky cider. I was lucky enough to speak to Peter Stuart for a couple of minutes about how he started making cider and his vision for the future. There is a video of this on the Thistly Cross Cider page, filmed by my friend Kamil. Once the tent was up we made our way to the bar and we enjoyed a good few real ales from various breweries. One of the breweries was the Tempest Brewery from Kelso and I met Gavin Meiklejohn, the owner and head brewer. We sampled a few of his beers and my favourite was the Citra - well worth a try.

Gavin Meiklejohn and myself enjoying a few beers at the bar

I also met a few other brewers, such as the head brewer from Demon Brew, watch this space for more details ........

That night our wives arrived and joined us at the bar. Later we barbecued some beautiful meat, drank some great Cider and spent the night in our tent.

The next day we went to the battle re - anactment, which I enjoyed, then we headed to a local fish farm and bought some fish for the barbecue with Mark, who was a nice guy that we met at the festival. Then it was back to the bar to sample some more real ale's and great cider !!! The ceilidh later on that night was really enjoyable and a great end to the weekend. Check out the video below for a flavour of the event.

I left the festival on the Sunday and on the Monday was in London working. As you might guess, I did make time for a few beers. I went out to two pubs with my good friend Stewart. The pub below was in the City of Westminster and was old and surrounded by new office buildings. they had a few good ales and the staff were friendly.

However, my favorite pub in London is "The Ship Inn". This is just across the road and through a passage from monument station. It's my favorite for a whole lot of reasons !! most of which I'm not going into here, but they serve great food, great ale and it has an old world friendly feel to it. Many thanks to the manager and barman who made us feel very welcome on Monday night - despite the lack of blue cheese sauce for the steak - but the free pint more than made up for it.

I am now back home and drying out my liver in preparation for the next time !

It's that time of year again when we start to think about going on holiday, the summer, getting away from it all. It's also the time when all the festivals start, i.e. beer festivals, whisky festivals and there are lots of them happening in Scotland. I plan to go to as many as I can and have started with the Paisley Beer Festival a couple of weeks ago. Check out the video below to get a flavour of the event:

After the beer festival john and I went on to two pubs in Paisley, "Hamishes Hoose" and the "The Last Post". We had a meal in Hamishes Hoose, we were feeling hungry after all the great beers at the festival ! then moved on to the Last post, which is a large Wetherspoons pub. Both are well worth a visit and are reviewed on the pub reviews page - Check out the reviews as there are lots of photo's and more information there about the pubs.

There are lots of festivals over the next couple of months, check out the festivals page of the web site - FestivalsI am planning to go to the"Thistly Cross Cider Festival"with my wife Christine on Friday 3rd and Saturday 4th June 2011. This is held at the Belhaven fruit farm just outside Dunbar and has lots of Cider and great real ales from various breweries. There is also a Ceilidh and small camp site. I'm looking forward to it as we are meeting some friends, Julie and Kamil, and we are not taking out children !!!!!! - An adults weekend away. I will take some video and do a report for the blog.

On the night of Tuesday the 26th of April I got together with my brother Steven and his good friend Simon. We tasted some of the beers from the Colonsay Brewery. The video below is the edited version, we spent hours enjoying these beers !! Enjoy.

It's been almost a month since my last blog entry, sorry ! I have been busy with work and family. I was working in Barcelona at a pharma conference at the end of March for eight days. As I was working for a company based in the south of England I was the only Scottish person on the crew ! This leads to a lot of ribbing about my accent but its great working with these guys. The picture below was taken in the "Berlin bar", which was half way between our hotel and the place we were working at. As you can imagine we did like to have a pint on the way home from work and this was the best place. The bar itself had a limited selection of drinks but the beer was cold and not too expensive, the old bar maid was pretty grumpy with us until she saw how much money we were spending, then she started to look out for us coming in - she even gave us some tapas one night !

I got back from Barcelona on the first of April and was working in Gleneagles Golf Resort on the third. I was there for three days with one other technician working at a conference. We stayed in Auchterarder and managed to drink in every pub in the town ! there are reviews of two of the pubs, The Glendevon Hotel Bar and The Niblick. The other two bars in town, I can't remember their names, weren't that good. If you are in Auchterarder I would recommend The Niblick as I think its the best bar in town. Check out the reviews by clicking on the names above.

As many of you may already know, I work as an Audio Visual project manager / technician at events, conferences, road shows, etc - Check out my other web site www.BigRedResources.weebly.com if you wold like to know more about this. Most conferences are pretty dull but every now and again I work at one I really enjoy. This happened in mid April when I worked at "The World Whiskies Conference" in Glasgow. This is run by a whisky writer called Ian Buxton. I met and talked to Ian and many other influential people in the drinks industry from companies like Diageo, all the way to to companies based in Taiwan, namely the King Car Distillery which produces Kavalan whisky. I had the pleasure of speaking to Mr Ian Y.L. Chang, head blender of Kavalan, a very nice man who is passionate about his work. I didn't take any photo's at the conference but the image below is of the King Car Distillery - which gets about a million visitors a year and you can blend a bottle of your own whisky when you are there !

The main reason that the blog has been on hold is that my father passed away a couple of weeks ago. There has been a lot of family time and arrangements that had to be made over the last couple of weeks. My father has now been laid to rest and life goes on. The picture below was taken by my eldest daughter on her mobile phone about a month ago.

There is lots to look forward to in the next blog. I have managed to get hold of some great beers from some of the more remote breweries in Scotland and will be tasting them with a few friends. We will of course film this and put the results on the blog and appropriate brewery pages. Its also coming into the season for beer festivals and I will be going to as many as I can, starting with the Paisley beer festival which is this weekend coming, i.e. Saturday the 30th of April. If you can make it then I'll see you there, if not, then I'll take a few photo's and tell you all about it. See you soon, Alastair.

Most of the people in Scotland will not only know what a Burns supper is, but will probably have been to one. For those of you out there that don't know what a burns supper is, here is a quick description. It is a night when people get together to celebrate the life and works of Robert burns, poet and song writer. The meal that is served is usually Haggis Turnips and potatoes and the drink will include whisky.

At the start of the meal the host recites the Burns poem, address to the Haggis. This is what James is doing in the picture below.

The Burns Supper that we have is a very informal affair. During the meal we each have to do a Burns piece. It can be a poem or a song. There is no order to when we do our piece, you do it when you feel it's the right time. Christine and me did our piece quite early in the night as we were playing the song "Green Grow the Rashies o'". I played the guitar and sang and Christine played along on the violin.

We were enjoying a single malt that James had bought. It was The Glenrothes Select Reserve. This was a smooth whisky with a dry finish, I think it is a Speyside Malt - if it isn't then it tastes like one ! We also started the night with a McEwan's Champion Ale. This is a great ale, with a chocolate, caramel overtone. It also has a kick as it's 7.3%.There were various other drinks during the night, the Arran 10 year old made an appearence, (its worth a try as its an unusual island whisky as it's not at all peaty).

As the night went on other guests did their party piece's, Gillian Grant sang "Aye Fond Kiss", my brother Steven recited a poem about whisky. I'm afraid that I not sure what the other guests did as the drink was beginning to take to take its toll on my memory.

It was a great night out with friends and family, James and Gillian were very good hosts and have set the bar for next year. I believe next year it's Mine and Christine's turn to host the Burns night - I'm looking forward to it already.

As the title of this post is "a busy couple of weeks" you might understand that I've just not had the time to get organised. I have gone from full time employment, (I was the senior audio visual technician at the RBS conference center, Gogarburn), to being freelance again and I'm busy but enjoying the work.

I have managed to fit in a few visits to a brewery and some pubs over the last two weeks. One of the highlights was a visit to Stewart Brewing, at their brewery in Loanhead on the outskirts of Edinburgh. I was visiting another company in the area about freelance work and took the opportunity to pop in. I met Jo Stewart, co owner of Stewart Brewing, and she was kind enough to give me a guided tour of the brewery, which I filmed. Check out the clip below:

Last weekend was the start to this years six nations rugby. Scotland were playing France, (in France), so I decided it was a good excuse to go for a few beers with my mate John. We decide not to go into Edinburgh this time as there would be no rugby supporters there, so we went to South Queensferry. This small town has a lot of history behind it, with some of the pubs dating back to 1683 and others being mentioned in famous novels by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson. We started at one end of the old high street and steadily, (well steadily at first), made our way to the other side. The first pub we went to was the "Hawes Inn". Check out the clip below:

After the dissapointment of the Hawes Inn we moved along the high street to a small pub, (its a snug really), called the "Anchor Inn". This bar was small, its about the same size as a large living room from an ordinary house, but I liked it. It was full of locals talking, reading the paper and relaxing. There was no music but it had a decent sized screen for watching the sports and the bar maid was very helpful. I ordered the round, spoke to john and just as I was taking my jacket off she brought the drinks over to us. We only had one drink here, (I wanted a few screens to watch the rugby), then moved onto the "Ferry Tap". Check out the clip below:

The rugby started, we watched the first half, Scotland were not playing well - at all. We then decided to go to a bar with smaller screens as we didn't want to see the game in any detail. We went to the bar at "Orocco Pier", (this is also a restaurant which is well worth a visit). It was a different atmosphere all together, more up market and aimed at coffee drinkers during the day and couples at night. It was also by far the most expensive round of the night - not a problem to me as it was John's turn to buy !!! Check out the clip below:

We stayed here for a while then moved onto two other pubs in the high street, the "Stag Inn" and the "Moorings". The Stag is very much a down to earth locals bar with the standard range of drinks and a friendly enough feel to it. The Moorings was OK but a bit run down. I believe it is about to close for refurbishment. There are clips filmed in both of these pubs, but as it was now quite late in the evening they were not very good, even I can't make out what I was saying !!!

I am looking forward to next weekend as Scotland is playing Wales at Murrayfield - Anybody fancy a pint in Edinburgh ?

It's Sunday, the working week is over, family commitments have been fulfilled. I have an afternoon that I can enjoy !

So I went into Edinburgh with a good friend, John, and we spent the afternoon in four great pubs. They Were - "The Halfway House" - "The Guildford" - "Cafe Royal Bar & Buffet" and "The Voodoo Rooms". We had a great afternoon just chilling out, drinking some great ales and soaking in the atmosphere from these beautiful, traditional Edinburgh pubs. To help show you more a bout the pubs We took along a video camera and filmed a little in each of them, the films are below. There is also a pub review page for each of them on the Pub Reviews page.

The first pub we went to was "The Halfway House". This is halfway up the steps, ( that's why its called the halfway house ), on Flesh Market Close, just across from the Waverly train station. I have passed this pub many times and wondered what it was like on the inside, especially as it has a large sign outside telling us it was "Edinburgh pub of the year 2009". Well I can tell you it is SMALL ! but cosy and serves some great real ales from Scotland's new breweries. It also serves traditional Scottish food such as haggis, oatcakes, etc. I can see why it was pub of the year as it makes a real effort to provide an excellent selection of food and drinks which is constantly changing.

Check out the video:

We then moved onto The Guildford Arms, which is on West Register street. This is on the other side of the Waverly train station, behind the Princess Street Burger King. We came here because I had been in contact with the person who writes the web site www.goodbeergoodpubs.com and they were astonished that I didn't have it on the site already. This gave me a brilliant excuse to come back here, (not that I needed much encouragement). This is one of my all time favourite Edinburgh pubs. It has been family owned for over a hundred years, it serves great cask conditioned ales, a large selection of whiskies and I have never had any bad service, even when the bar is full to bursting. Today however it was quite quiet and me and John just chatted over A couple of pints of Exciseman's Ale and took in the surroundings. I took a small video, (which is now on the pub review page for the Guildford Arms), then we tried to take another little video, have a look at what happened below:

Round the corner, still on West Register Street is The Cafe Royal Bar & Buffet. This is a beautiful bar and is more than worth a visit for the decor alone, never mind the excellent service and great selection of food and drinks. This is a great place to take your wife, girlfriend, or in my case, John. It is just a great place to be, although I felt that we were a little under dressed. I've been here many times before, the last time I was here I was with my mate Donny and we both had the oysters - they were fabulous ! Check out the pictures on the pub review page, (the link is highlighted in brown above), and the video below:

If you keep going round the corner on West Register Street then you come to The Voodoo Rooms, (as this was the fourth pub of the afternoon we were getting a little merry). The Voodoo Rooms is more than just a bar, it's a music venue, a cafe restaurant, a club, etc. The decor is black and gold and hits you like a wet leather glove, especially if you've had a few. Apart from that, I like this place and have seen many comedy shows here and spent a few nights at this bar during the festival. Well worth a visit, for many different reasons. Check out the video.

We really enjoyed the time we spent that afternoon and no doubt will do it again some time soon.

Cheers !

Alastair

P.S. If you know of some good pubs, Please tell me !!! - I'm always on the look out for new places to go.